


The Witch and The World-Tree

by saltandlimes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Mythology References, Quests, Restraints, Rope Bondage, Voyeurism, Yggdrasil - Freeform, fairy tale: the towering tree, some one sided thor/amora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 18:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17249243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandlimes/pseuds/saltandlimes
Summary: Odin is dying, cursed by a witch for seeking knowledge he had not earned. After doctors throughout Asgard fail to heal him, Thor sets out on a perilous quest: climb Yggdrasil itself and find a cure for his father's sickness.He finds more than magic among its branches.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamkist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkist/gifts).



> [ifall](http://ifall.tumblr.com/) asked for a fairy tale au and restraint. I got so excited that this is what happened!

The king of Asgard is sick. He has been, for many a year, and all the sages in the land are not able to cure him. They have come and gone, murmuring incantations and strewing bags of foul smelling herbs about his room. Some have insisted that Odin eat the first fruits of summer, and some have said that nothing but a pear plucked during the depths of winter will suffice. Doctor and apothecaries, barbers and leeches, they have all come and gone, and then given way to the hedge wizards and the gnarled herb peddlers, all promising miracles. 

The parade continues, day after day, and Odin wastes away, never getting a wit better, until Eir, the family doctor, throws them all out. After she and the queen chase them from the palace in a hissing, roiling mass, the king and his family are finally left alone in his sickroom. 

Odin is propped up in his bed on a mountain of pillows. His heavily lined face has become drawn over the past years, and his thick arms have wasted away almost to nothing. Beside him, Thor kneels, his hands folded on Odin’s coverlet. He has set aside his armor and his hammer, and is dressed all in soft clothes that befit a sickroom, yet even in this place of quiet and rest, there is something about his wild hair and bright eyes that speaks of days on the trail, and of blood drenched battlefields. 

Odin takes Thor’s hand, and his illness ravaged skin is pale next to Thor’s golden beauty. Even so, when he squeezes, Thor’s hand goes red and then white with the force of Odin’s grip. 

“I did not want to ask this of you, my son,” Odin rasps out. 

“You’re not asking, father,” Thor booms. “Even if it were not the only thing left to try, I would gladly climb to Yggdrasil’s highest branch and beyond for you. I only wish you had told me earlier that this could cure you.”

“We thought to spare you. The journey up the world-tree is no laughing matter, and the witch who dwells in its branches is more than a match for any great hero,” Frigga speaks up. Her eyes are steel, but her hand is soft where it caresses the back of Odin’s wizened head. 

“Am I not your son?” Thor asks. “Do I not owe you my life?”

Odin smiles, his chapped lips streaked with blood, red where they have split. Frigga frowns even harder, but says nothing. 

“You are the son I have always dreamed of. But even you, Thor, should not have to bear the weight of my survival.”

“My shoulders are wide enough for that!” Thor protests. 

“Perhaps so,” Odin rasps out. “Yet sometimes brawn is not the only thing needed.”

“I have whatever it takes,” Thor says. He presses Odin’s hand between his larger ones. “I will not fail you. If I do, I will not be worthy to call myself the heir to your throne.”

“Be not too hasty to swear such things,” Frigga warns. 

“I would not, were it not my father’s life that hangs in the balance,” Thor looks up at her. “Mother, I am not that brash boy anymore. I can do this.”

“We shall see,” Eir says.

***

Thor rides out the next day at dawn. It seems that the whole of Asgard is there to see him off. They say nothing, but when he emerges from the depths of the stables, hundreds of people line the cobbled streets, each silently leaning out to brush their fingertips across him or throw a flower in his path. Thor walks his horse slowly. 

This is a different sort of procession from the ones he’s used to. Usually, his people cheer for him, wishing him on towards victory or celebrating his glorious battles. Usually, they reach out adoringly, trying to gather just a little of his valor for themselves. This time, though, they stare with tears in their eyes. 

“My prince,” a woman calls out, and Thor turns to see Lorelei pushing through the crowd, her sharp elbows digging into those who don’t move out of her way fast enough. He slows even more.

“My lady Lorelei,” Thor says. “I do not remember setting a meeting.” He can’t quite keep the bite from his voice. Lorelei blushes, her pretty pink cheeks growing even more flushed, and if Thor didn’t know better, he’d be tempted by her. He does know better, though, and he’s not going to risk Lorelei sinking her claws into him. 

“My sister sent me to catch you before you leave.”

“And why did the lady Amora not come herself?” Thor asks. Amora is a different question entirely. She’s been after Thor for as long as he can remember, and were she not a lady of high birth and apt to refuse such things, Thor would have tumbled her countless times. She’s trouble, too smart for her own good, and too appealing, but as enchanting as beauty is, and as much as Thor wants her, he’s never had trouble dancing just ahead of her. 

“She was overcome with weeping, fainting at the thought that you might be riding to your death.”

Thor pauses in his slow walk, turning to look Lorelei straight in the face. 

“My lady Amora has never been overcome by anything in her life. Now tell me your errand.”

Lorelei’s eyes sparkle, but all she does is reach into her sleeve and pull out a scrap of lacy white linen, embroidered with her and Amora’s house crest. 

“She begs you to carry this token of her favor with you on your great quest, and if you are brought home safe and whole, to remember that it is her love that has kept you from harm.”

“Does your sister think so little of my prowess in battle that she believes I need such tokens?” He asks Lorelei. 

Lorelei smirks. 

“I cannot imagine that is so. Yet you have won tourneys bearing her favor before. Perhaps she simply wishes to give you the same advantage against whatever new enemies you will face on your journey.

“This is not a tourney, where there will be fame and glory at the end. Does Amora forget that?”

“Of course not, my prince. Yet she would feel easier if you kept this, all the same.” Lorelei holds up the handkerchief once again. 

Thor rubs a finger over the head of his hammer, thinking. Amora is lovely, and perhaps, just maybe, if he wears her favor, he might get a chance to take her to bed at least once. He nods, then bends over a little, just enough that Lorelei can tie Amora’s handkerchief at his shoulder.

“Tell your sister that I wear her favor and that it will no doubt cheer me on my way.”

Lorelei curtsies prettily, and then slips off, sliding back into the crowd like a beautiful shadow. Thor shrugs, trying to shake off the odd feel of Amora’s handkerchief. 

He forgets it quickly enough, though, because he’s coming to the gates out of the city, and the crowd has thickened, still quiet and watching, but now pressed together. The gates are closed, but when he finally reaches them, the watchmen push them open without a word. Thor swings into the saddle and looks back at the massed crowd. People have filled in the passage through which he rode, and now they’re a solid wall behind him. 

“I will return,” he proclaims in a loud voice. “I will return, and our king will be healed. This I do swear. This I swear on my honor as Odinson, as your prince. You will see me once more!”

He turns away and spurs his horse. A great cry goes up then, echoing out of the gates, a thousand voices chanting “Thor” together as one.

***

Thor rides for two days before he reaches the foothills that surround Yggdrasil’s roots. They are covered in green grass, low sloping downs that rise up from Asgard’s farmland in soft curves. As Thor makes his way higher and higher, trees start to populate the slopes, little things compared to Yggdrasil. He can see the world-tree now. Its roots rise from the ground in great mounds, looping upwards and then diving back underground, leading him onward. Even the hills’ open swathes are dappled by the golden light that filters through Yggdrasil’s branches, and as grows dark, Thor cannot see all the stars of home, for they are hidden by world-tree. 

He camps that night at the tree’s foot. He sees the base of the trunk from more than a mile off, a hulking thing of grey bark. As he draws close, the land darkens, until it is covered in creeping things, grey fungus and mounded bushes made all of night-dark leaves. The light here is all dyed green, no longer the golden glimmers that shone down on him during the first part of his ride. Thor pats his horse’s neck. She was restless all the last mile, as though she knew this was no place for them to be. 

When Thor dismounts and pulls off his saddle bags, he gives her a long look. The tree trunk is broad and grey, and its smaller branches break from it at regular intervals. Thor could probably climb a few before the light vanishes completely, but something holds him back. One more night on the earth, before taking to the trees. He pats his horse again.

“Go home, girl. You know the way. Go home. You can’t come up here with me,” he whispers in her ear. She wickers, nuzzling against his shoulder opposite of Amora’s token, then turns, and sets off at a trot. Thor watches her until she disappears behind a tumbled mass of rocks and roots. 

He doesn’t dare make a fire. 

He eats cold bread and cheese that night, a few strips of jerky added into the mixture. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to hunt among the branches, nor how long climbing the tree will take. It seems to stretch off above him infinitely, leading all the way to the stars and beyond. There is no sign of birds or beasts above him, nor any droppings around him. There may be nothing to find on his entire journey. After all, he has no idea how high he’ll have to climb to find the witch his mother and Eir had spoken about, the witch who holds his father’s cure. 

Until a few days ago, he hadn’t even known his father was cursed.

He’d thought about that on the long ride through the hill country. When Thor was a child, Odin had told story after story of his adventures through the land. He had always said that he gave up his eye during his great quest for wisdom. Thor can see, through the firelight-haze of memory, himself sitting on his father’s knee, poking at the gnarled flesh of his father’s eye socket, listening in awe as Odin recounted riding alone through cobwebs and down dank passageways, and drinking of the well of knowledge. 

His father never said that the eye was not the only price he paid, nor that he had not paid it willingly. He had never spoken of a witch, or a curse. 

Thor shakes his head, and beds down, trying to put witches and spirits out of his mind. His back is against a great, curving root and his head is pillowed on his saddle bags. He presses his face to them, and hopes for dreamless sleep. 

***

Thor sets out the next morning, awake but not refreshed. All his wishing hadn’t done any good. His dreams were haunted by gnarled faces and cauldrons bubbling over spitting fires, by thin fingers grasping his tunic and pulling him close, telling him dark truths he never wanted to know. 

It’s almost a relief to get up and eat a meagre breakfast of dried fruit. At least whatever he meets on the tree will be something he can fight with true hands, rather than swing at ineffectually deep in the miasma of dreamland. 

He sets foot on Yggdrasil’s first branch and finds it solid as a stone stair. It doesn’t even tremble beneath his weight, though it is only the size of his thigh. Thor nods, putting on hand on the tree’s trunk to stead himself. He tightens the straps of his saddle bags where he has tied them together to form a pack. 

Thor begins to climb.

It’s like walking up stairs, narrow stairs with gaps between each on that threaten a fall down to the floor below that will leave him broken forever. Despite that, Thor is grateful that he need not struggle with ropes and harnesses, with clawing his way upward as though clinging to a rock face. Yggdrasil leads him onward instead, a new branch just where he needs it to be each time he takes a step. 

By what he judges is noon, he’s climbed so far that the ground below seems only a memory. He has only rounded a little of the trunk, though, just a few degrees of a circle that is greater than any he could have imagined. The branches have grown thicker as he climbs, and now each one is two steps wide.

Thor sinks down on one of the wider ones, setting his back to the trunk of the world-tree. The bark is smooth. It is unlike anything else he has ever felt, slippery without being wet, seamless and unmarred by the ravages of time. It is unyielding, though, and he pillows his cloak behind himself so that his back does not ache from his seat. 

His lunch is bread and cheese again, this time slices from a loaf studded with berries. It’s been wrapped in wax paper stamped with his mother’s seal. When he opens it, the smell of freshly baked bread drifts up to him, held in by hearth and home and Frigga’s touch. Thor eats it greedily, a few crumbs falling down his front, one catching on the tail of Amora’s handkerchief and hanging there, a dark spot again the creamy white of her lacework. Thor brushes it away. As he does, he accidentally tugs at the cloth, and it comes loose a little. Thor sighs, tying it just a whit tighter. 

It is not worth the argument to come back without it. 

When he finishes lunch, he starts to climb again. The branches widen with every step he takes, until he is climbing up a never ending spiral of wooden floors, each with a leap between them that rattles Thor’s bones each time he lands. 

Around him, it grows darker. This close to Yggdrasil’s trunk, it is always twilight, but soon it becomes so dim that Thor can actually feel his eyes straining as he looks to the edge of the next branch. 

On the next leap, he almost misses. His toe catches on the edge of the branch, and for one teetering moment, Thor thinks he is about to fall down, his body tumbling through leaves and bark until it lands, broken, never to be recovered or burned with his kin in Asgard. 

He flings himself forwards, twisting his body in the air. He manages to land, sprawled flat, the wind knocked out of him. For a moment, Thor just lies there, his chest aching and his heart pounding. He pushes himself up slowly, mould and little ferns clinging to the front of his jerkin as he heaves himself up. 

He is almost out of sight of his starting position. He brushes himself off, then heaves his pack to the ground. Supper is another cold meal. There are no stories that tell whether or not one should light a fire under Yggdrasil’s eaves, or, much less, in its branches. Thor does not want to risk it. Not when his father’s life hangs in the balance. 

When at least his belly is full, if not sated, Thor curls up in his bedroll. There are a good three feet at his head and food, and nowhere to easily tie a rope. This branch stretches out from the world-tree’s trunk without a curve, an arm outflung in warning. It has no knots for Thor to latch himself to. Instead, he finds the exact center, and lies down parallel to the trunk, so that if he rolls, at least he’ll roll down the branch, rather than right off. 

He falls asleep more quickly than he expected, the wind in the branches lulling him. 

***

He wakes at what he thinks is dawn, though it is more a slow misty awakening than the flaming glory of the sun coming over the horizon that he usually sees from the top of Asgard’s great hill. Even here, all around him things are stirring. They lurk, just out of sight, chittering softly to one another as they awaken from sleep. Some splash in pools that have gathered on Yggdrasil’s branches overnight. The silvery sound of water reminds Thor of how dry his mouth feels. 

The world-tree’s bark is damp under Thor’s hands as he pushes himself upright. His back aches. He has seldom spend a night like the last one, with only his blankets for comfort, without a fire or the murmurs of his friends and companions to keep him warm. Instead, there was only the sound of the wind and the snuffle of living things who neither know or care for him.

He shakes off the night and brushes down his clothes, straightening them. His hands are clammy, and when he rolls up his blankets, he finds that their oil-cloth exterior is covered in beaded dew. Thor leans down, his tongue reaching out and touching one before he considers what he’s doing.

His laughter breaks through the mist, and from somewhere off in the distance, a small thing screams its disagreement. Thor chuckles to himself, hefting Mjolnir up and tying her to his belt. His mouth is even drier now. When he reaches for his waterskin, he finds it empty. The few drops he squeezes out taste of leather and death, and they do little to moisten his lips. 

Thor laces the back of his boots tight, then hefts his pack to his shoulders. He can still make out the sound of something splashing in water drifting from a branch somewhere above him. There is no way he will be able to continue on his journey without filling his skin from it.

The next branch is wider than any Thor has been on before. It seems almost a plain of wood, stretching out in front of him for thirty paces or more. It is as flat as the one Thor slept on last night, and seems more a great tree than a branch, growing out from Yggdrasil as though the world-tree were itself the earth. There are smaller branches arching out of it above and below, a small forest that beckons Thor to its depths. 

The tinkling of water comes from within the thicket of little branches. Thor hurries to it, pushing leaves out of the way. Each small branch is as thick around as his shoulders, towering above him, trees in their own right, though not all grow towards the sky. Down at their bowls, Yggdrasil’s great branch is covered in moss and ferns. If Thor were to look only just in front of his own feet, he might believe that he was in fact in some forest of his father’s, stalking a deer or a rabbit with his friends. 

When he looks ahead, the illusion shatters a little. The smaller branches are at odd angles, and they twist and turn in shapes not quite like that of their earthly counterparts. One bows almost completely over, and Thor ducks under it to look beyond. 

What he sees freezes him in place. There, in front of him, is a great stone basin set in a clearing in the branches. It seems as though it is a huge bird-bath, filled with dew and rainwater. At one side, stone steps lead up to its lip, which rises four feet above the floor of the branch. 

In the center stands a man, naked, with skin as pale as starlight. His black hair falls down his back in a graceful waterfall, reaching nearly to his waist. His ass curves out below it. Thor’s mouth waters for the first time today. The man’s cheeks are peach-pink, two perfect handfuls each, and lead to legs more shapely than any other’s Thor has ever seen. 

The man’s thighs are corded with muscle, but narrow. He is thin as a whip, yet when he bends over Thor can see the flex of his calves and knows him strong. He spreads his legs a little when he reaches down to scrub them, and through the gap between his thighs, Thor can see heavy balls, the kind he would love to wrap his tongue about. 

Water splashes when the man straightens up. He stretches luxuriously up to the sky, and Thor has to bite back a sympathetic groan as the man’s spine pops. The falcon-perches of his shoulders are broad enough to hint at work, yet delicate enough that Thor wishes to kiss them and caress the bone-cage that surrounds the man’s heart. 

Then the man turns. His eyes are bright as heaven’s candle, shining in the dark. His skin is just as pale at his throat, and the only hair that is not on his head nestles around his cock in a wiry dark thicket. His cock itself hangs down soft against his thigh, but even here it hints at how thick it will be when coaxed to wake. 

Thor does moan this time. 

He slaps a hand over his mouth, but not before the man has stopped, stock still in the middle of the pond. His head turns slowly as he scans the forest around him, and Thor hardly dares to breathe. He doesn’t know what’s come over him. Never before has he spied on anyone in the bath, not even when Amora invited him to speak to her, then chose to spend the whole time in the next room, being dressed by her ladies in waiting.

The man’s eyes light on him and a slow smile spreads across that beautiful face. 

“What do we have here?” he says softly. 

Thor sighs, and then straightens up. He raises a hand, about to greet the other man. Before he can says anything, or even make a sound, the man raises a hand as well. It comes down with a slash, and the world starts to dim. There is a sharp pain in Thor’s knee, and he realizes it has hit the floor of the branch. 

That’s the last thing he knows before the darkness takes him completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +I got so excited that this turned into a multi-chapter adventure. It will be regularly posted on Mondays!
> 
> +Find me on [tumblr](http://saltandlimes.tumblr.com/), [pillowfort](http://pillowfort.io/saltandlimes), [dreamwidth](http://saltandlimes.dreamwidth.org/), or [twitter](http://twitter.com/saltandlimes/)


	2. Chapter 2

Thor wakes up with a start. His arms jerk at his sides and he groans. There are ropes wrapped tight around him, and he’s managed to drive them into the muscles of his shoulders. He isn’t wearing his armor any longer, is dressed in only his linen under tunic and his leggings. His neck and head are unbound. He cranes his head up and can just barely see the black cords that crisscross his chest and encircle his ankles. 

“Finally awake?”

Thor starts again, and groans wen his bindings tighten around him. 

“None of that now,” comes the voice. “The tree is wide here, and you won’t fall off, but it would be a shame if you injured yourself and couldn’t climb down.”

Thor stills. The voice is soft, clear, yet with a dark depth to it. It is unlike any voice he has heard before. It could be that of a man or woman, of one young or old, or better yet, all those things at once, ever-shifting and ever-changing. 

“Who are you?” he asks. The voice is somewhere off to his right, but when he turns his head that way, all he sees is yet another of Yggdrasil’s smaller branches, this one a little thicker than his waist. 

“I should be asking you that,” the voice answers. “After all, you’ve seen all of me, bare to the world, and I know nothing about you.”

“See all…” Thor trails off. 

It is the man from the pool. Whatever knocked him out must have dropped him on his head, because now Thor isn’t sure why that wasn’t obvious from the start. 

“You do know it is impolite to look at someone while they’re bathing, don’t you?” The man asks. 

Thor flushes. 

“I am truly sorry,” he says, almost stumbling over his words in his haste to get them out. “I didn’t intend to cause offense.”

The man hums. There is a rustle, and then knees land next to Thor’s side.

Thor can see him now. He wears a light linen shift, so thin that it shows the shadows of his nipples and the one line of dark hair on his belly. It is belted around his waist, seemingly healthy close by a band woven of living leaves. It is all he wears, and Thor tries not to look at the place between the man’s legs where he is sure that beautiful cock shows through the tunic. 

“No,” the man speaks, and Thor fizzes his eyes on the man’s narrow face. “I don’t think you did. But that’s the thing, You _did_ mean to look.”

“I was thirsty,” Thor protests. “I only wanted to find some water.”

“Thirsty, were you?” The man laughs. He runs his eyes up and down Thor and chuckles again. “Only a few nights without your lady and you already grow that desperate?”

“I meant,” Thor starts, and then stops himself. “What do you mean, my lady?” he asks slowly.

“You wear her token on the shoulder of your jerkin. I did not think I did you enough damage to knock the idea of a maid out of your head.”

Thor clenches his fists, and the cords around him grow tighter as he flexes his muscles. 

“She is not my lady.”

“You wear her crest.”

“I-” Thor cuts himself off. “I can’t see why you care.”

“A rather different sort of man is he who spies on another because he desires forbidden fruit, than the one who is struck by beauty for which he can openly lust.”

Thor nods as much as he can. 

“Fear not. My interest was of the second kind.”

“Was it then?” The man leans over and touches the ropes that bind Thor tight where they cross in the center of Thor’s chest. 

The ropes glow. They turn neither gold nor silver. Instead, black light seems to seep from them, as though they were made of night only barely contained. The glow spreads until, all at once, the ropes burst and pitch dark flows over Thor for an instant. 

It clears before Thor has a chance to open his mouth to gasp, and he is left free once more. 

“Who are you?” he asks. 

“I believe you owe me your name first. As I said, you’ve seen me as though we were the most intimate of lovers, and I don’t even have your name.”

Thor pushes himself up on arms that seem to have weakened during their imprisonment. When he’s up facing the man, he makes as much of a bow as he can while sitting on the leaf litter that covers this part of the branch. 

“Thor, Odinson, prince, heir apparent to the throne of Asgard. I beg your pardon for any offense I caused you and your person.”

The man says nothing. His eyes are wide, forest green as dark as Yggdrasil’s largest leaves. He stares at Thor for long moments. All Thor can hear is the sound wind in branches, ever-changing, yet always present, the sound of the universe’s breath rushing about them and through them. The quiet between them stretches so long that Thor begins to be able to hear the world-tree’s creatures stirring around him. 

“You have my pardon, young Thor,” the man says. 

Thor starts, one hand coming down to catch himself on the leaf litter. The man’s voice is low and soft, and he pulls the “o” in Thor’s name out, until it because a breath all of its own. 

“And your name?” Thor asks. “I would beg that as well.”

The man laughs. 

“My name,” he says, “is Loki.”

***

Loki draws water from a great barrel just next to the pool, bringing it to Thor where Thor is struggling to tie his leather jerkin and vambraces back on. The sound of it slopping in the cup brings back Thor’s thirst, and he takes it from Loki so quickly that a little spills over his hands and more slides down his chin to wet his beard.

“Slowly,” Loki tells Thor. 

Thor chuckles into the cup. 

“I told you I was thirsty.”

“Apparently you told the truth,” Loki giggles as well, his laugh light and clear. He takes the cup back from Thor, setting it on the high lip of the stone basin. Thor goes back to fumbling with wet fingers at the laces up the back of his jerkin. 

“Let me help you with that,” Loki says to him. 

“You did take it off in the first place,” Thor says.

“Careful with your tongue, young Thor. It might get you into trouble someday.”

“I don’t think it’s going to get me into more trouble than my eyes already did today.”

Loki chuckles. He pads silently around Thor, and stands behind him, a finger tracing up the lacings of Thor’s armor. Thor shivers. Just a little while ago, he was bound, lying flat on his back at Loki’s mercy. It is, perhaps, not wise to have Loki at his back. Yet Loki seemed truly only offended by Thor’s spying, and when Thor thinks of how Sif or Hogun would react if he tried the same thing, he understands. Anyway, Loki’s fingers are cool and soft where they brush against the back of his neck, and they feel good in the thick humidity of Yggdrasil’s branches.

“So, son of the king, why are you here, high up above your land?”

Thor swallows, moistening lips that have gone dry as Loki smoothes out the shoulders of his jerkin.

“I-” he starts, then swallows again. “I am on a quest.”

“Yes,” Loki comes back to face him, then reaches out and straightens Amora’s handkerchief on his shoulder. “I would have thought so.”

Thor blushes, then squares his shoulders.

“I came to demand-” he cuts himself off. “I cam to beg a boon of a witch who is said to live among these branches. Do you know her?”

Loki’s eyes grow even wider, the green fire in their depths. He folds his arms across his chest, pulling his shift even tighter. His pink nipples stand out beneath it, flat as they are, and Thor has to fix his eyes on Loki’s face so as not to stare at them. 

“What do you want with the witch?” he asks Thor. 

“My father is dying,” Thor says. It is not as though it is some sort of secret, after all.

“And you chose a witch living somewhere in the branches of the world-tree as the most likely place to find a cure?” Loki scoffs. 

“ _I_ didn’t choose.” Thor says. He straightens his belt, Mjolnir bumping comfortably against one of his thighs as he does. “My father has no other choice.”

“Than to send his only son on a journey that few have attempted since the dawn of this universe?”

“You did,” Thor says. 

Loki laughs, though the sound is not as clear this time. 

“That I did, young prince. But I had reasons that were more than a hope and a gamble.”

“And so are mine. My father is cursed.”

“Many people have ill luck, especially when in the care of doctors.”

Thor shakes his head and paces away from Loki. They are still in the clearing holding the great basin, and there is enough room here to stalk back and forth while he talks. 

“No. He has a curse set on him.”

“Are you some magician, to know this?” Loki asks. He hops up onto the lip of the basin, his leap graceful and shockingly light, and stares down at Thor.

“Are you usually this obtuse?” Thor asks in reply.

“Perhaps. I have few visitors.”

“You are all alone up here?” Thor says. He stops his pacing to stand in front of Loki.

“I have the tree. And I am not the only thing that lives in Yggdrasil’s branches.”

“That seems a lonely life.”

“What would you know of loneliness?”

“More than you would think,” Thor says, his voice dropping low. He is a prince among his people, a leader with his warriors, a son with his family. It has long felt as though he was waging an endless war to play his part, to lead with ferocity, to give no quarter, and to stand apart from the rest. 

“Perhaps,” Loki says, staring down at him with pursed lips. “Perhaps.”

Thor shifts his weight between his feet. He has never said anything like that to anyone. Were he to tell his friends, they would try to cheer him, to tell him that he was brave, not reckless, that he was noble, not arrogant, and that he was not alone. Loki, though, does not care. He should not care. He is a stranger, one who does not even dwell on the green earth below them. And so, Thor finds himself opening his mouth to say more. 

“My father took wisdom for himself that he had promised to share with the witch. The witch cursed him for it.”

“And you wish to cure this father of yours, this thief?”

“He is not a thief,” Thor bristles. 

“No? Is there some word you in Asgard use for those who take what has been promised to others.”

Thor opens his mouth to retort, but once again, Loki’s mere gaze cuts him off short. Loki is not wrong. 

“Have I touched a nerve, young prince?” Loki laughs, and hops down from his perch, landing only a pace away from Thor. 

“Not a nerve,” Thor says slowly. “I only- I did not know my father’s deeds with this witch until only a week past. They are heavy on my mind still.”

Loki pauses where he’s begun to slip out from in front of Thor. 

“You did not know before?”

“Not even that his illness was in truth a curse.”

“He keeps such secrets from the one who would be his heir?”

Thor nods. 

“I did not imagine that,” Loki says. He steps close and looks into Thor’s face. This near, Thor notices that Loki is only a little shorter than he is. “I am sorry, Thor.”

“For what?” Thor asks, his voice soft because Loki is so near. 

Loki doesn’t answer. He reaches down and takes Thor’s hand. His own is soft, without calluses. His fingers fit between Thor’s thicker ones. 

“Come with me,” he says. “I will take you to the witch.”

Thor nods. Perhaps following Loki, who bound him with out even a thought, is not wise, but he has no other guide on Yggdrasil’s branches, and the company is welcome. Thor does not like to be alone. 

***

The branch is quiet as Loki leads him back towards Yggdrasil’s trunk. He keeps a tight hold on Thor’s hand, and Thor does not let go, not while Loki wends his way between the forest that covers the world-tree’s arms. It is still dim under the eaves of these little branches, and when they finally step from the copse, the slivers of sunlight that filter down from seem piercingly bright. 

In the sunlight, Loki’s skin seems to glow. Thor half expected it to become even paler, but instead, it seems like a chalice of light, just barely held together by the material of his shift. Thor tries to hold back a gasp, but something must give him away, because Loki turns back towards him.

“You are staring at me, Princeling.”

Thor drops his eyes to the wood at his feet. 

“Am I that much of a curiosity to you?” Loki asks.

“No!” Thor says, too loudly. There’s a great rustle from behind them, some creature disturbed by his voice.

“Oh? You are not curious at all?” Loki says. 

“You twist my meaning,” Thor protests. 

Loki laughs, letting go of Thor’s hand. He says nothing, only starts at a run and then leaps, landing lightly on the branch above this one. 

“Are you coming?” he calls down.

Thor growls, and follows, jumping upward this time with far more ease than he did this morning, when he was thirsty and almost delirious. He lands next to Loki and grins. 

“Here I am,” he announces. 

“I see that,” Loki says, so close that Thor can feel the flutter of his breath. He turns away, grabbing Thor’s hand and pulling him across the branch. 

“The witch lives not that far from here.”

***

Not that far turns out to mean three branches up. By the time they get there, Thor is at least a little accustomed to the flash of Loki’s pale legs as he jumps, the quiet tap of his feet as they make their way across branches as wide as houses. 

Loki turns them along one of the widest branches Thor has seen. Its center has been worn smooth, a beaten path that leads towards a thicket of smaller branches not unlike the one where Thor found Loki. These are larger even than those were, however. They soar upwards, great trees in their own right, and among them are small boulders and ferns, little nooks and crannies. The path leads straight into the copse of wood. 

“Through there,” Loki tells him. “That’s where you’ll find the witch’s house.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Thor asks. 

“I do have things to do,” Loki says. 

“Please,” Thor asks. The word is strange in his mouth, its savor new and exciting. 

Loki looks at him. His hand tightens where he’s still holding on to Thor, and his eyes darken, until they are a deeper green than even the deep places of the thicket before them. He watches Thor for a few moments, and Thor wants to squirm. There is a depth to Loki’s scrutiny that he has never felt before. 

“Alright then, Thor,” Loki agrees. 

He turns away from Thor then, and drops his hand. Thor’s palm is cold without it, too dry and too empty, but he doesn’t reach out for Loki again. 

Loki leads the way down the path. They’re soon under the deeper eaves of this little forest in the branches, and Loki’s skin dims back to its earlier moonlight. Around them, birds whistle. Thor hears the shout of a jay, and the coo of a mockingbird. They are the first bird calls he has been able to pick out clearly since he stepped onto Yggdrasil’s branches, and he finds himself straining to find other familiar sounds. He is so intent that he misses when Loki stops, and runs straight into him. 

“Have a care,” Loki says quietly. 

Thor looks up and freezes. 

In front of them is a low house, made all of wood. Its roof is woven branches and its sides are great logs. It is raised a little above the stretch of Yggdrasil’s branch, and the pilings it rests on are carven into the shape of great clawed feet, as though the house perches on the branch, ready to spring at any moment. 

The door faces them. 

There are three steps leading up to it. Thor crosses towards them, barely aware of Loki at his back. He takes a deep breath, then climbs up to the door. His fist lands heavily on it three times. 

There is no answer. 

“The witch must not be home,” Loki hisses behind him. 

“Or I’m not a welcome guest,” Thor whispers back. He knocks again, and the door swings open silently under his fist. Inside, it is dark, but Thor can just see a polished wood floor. 

“You should go in. Take what you want.”

Thor swings around. Loki stands at the bottom of the steps looking up at him. 

“What?” he asks. 

“The witch isn’t here. You could just find what you need and leave, and the witch wouldn’t be any the wiser.”

Thor takes the steps all at once, landing next to Loki in one little bound. His boots thumb dully as he lands, and he can just barely feel the reverberations, so slightly that he might be imagining it. 

“Steal, you mean?” 

Loki’s eyes narrow. 

“If you want to put it that way.”

“Loki-”

“It’s your father’s life, Thor. Shouldn’t you do whatever it takes to save it? And after all, why not steal a cure to cure a thief?”

“Loki, I-” Thor tries again.

“I’m the only one here. No one else will know what you’ve done. They will only know that you return victorious, and that you have done what no one else can,” Loki’s voice is soft, winding its way into Thor’s ears and slithering through him. It feels like he could get drunk on it, listening until he would do anything or be anyone. 

“No!” Thor yells. He’s about to say more, but there’s a horrible screech from somewhere to his right, and he pauses. 

“Did you hear that?” he asks. 

“The whole tree heard that, and all the worlds between. You need not yell, Thor,” Loki says. 

“That’s not what I meant. The cry.”

“Oh, that. Yes, rather.” Loki says. 

Thor turns away, their quarrel forgotten for a moment. The cry came from somewhere off to his left, close to the house. The ground there is muddy, as thought the morning dew has been ground into it and has changed leaf litter all to dirt.

At first, Thor sees nothing. Then, right next to one of the house’s clawed feet, he spots it. A gyrfalcon, smaller than most of its kind, huddled up. The branch next to it is a little darker than it should be, and the air nearby smells of blood more than of rot and wood. Thor catches his breath. 

“There,” he whispers, pointing.

“The falcon,” Loki whispers back. 

Thor tiptoes forwards, trying to keep his boots quiet on the branch. Even so, the bird flutters a wing, twisting back and forth. The other wing hangs at its side, limp and twisted. When Thor is as close as he dares, he drops to his knees. 

“I’m going to catch hold of its feet, then cover its head. Maybe then we can do something to help it.”

He doesn’t wait for Loki to answer. Instead, he reaches out. The falcon screams again, its talons flashing even in the dark of the house’s shadow. One catches on Thor’s finger, and there’s a searing pain as it rips through his skin. Thor curses under his breath. 

“Are you alright?” Loki asks.

Thor ignores him. He reaches towards the falcon again, this time more quickly, and manages to catch hold of its ankles. It screams, beating its uninjured wing frantically. Thor swears again. 

“Loki, quickly. Rip a piece of my tunic.”

Loki steps up behind him, and there’s a horrible rending sound as he does as Thor has asked. He brings over the scrap of fabric and tosses it over the falcon’s head in a makeshift hood before Thor can even ask. The falcon begins to quiet. 

The cool of the dew has seeped all the way into the knees of Thor’s leggings before the falcon finally calms completely. It stands, perched on Thor’s arm, Thor’s bleeding hand around its ankles in case it begins to struggle again. 

“I’m going to try to bind its wing,” he whispers to Loki. “You take over holding its ankles.”

Loki gives him a sharp look, but places his hand over Thor’s. Their skin brushes when Thor draws his own hand away. 

“Now what are you going to do?” Loki asks. “Your tunic isn’t an unlimited resources.” 

Thor casts about himself, looking for any scrap or extra fabric he can use to help the bird. 

“You could go inside. I’m sure the witch has something you could use.”

“No,” Thor says sharply. The bird stirs on his wrist and he takes a deep breath to calm himself. “No, Loki. I’m not stealing something, not even to help this creature.”

Loki is silent. Thor resumes his search, looking about until a flare of white catches the corner of his eye.

Amora’s handkerchief.

It’s still knotted to his shoulder, and it’s just the shape and size to make a sling. He reaches up with his free hand and begins to untie it, pulling it off one-handed.

“Your lady will be disappointed,” Loki tells him.

“As she’s not my lady, it hardly matters. And if she were the kind of person I cared to please, then she wouldn’t begrudge this.”

“Person?” Loki asks, but Thor is too busy struggling to bind the bird’s wing to answer. He can’t quite manage to lift the wing up one handed, not and slide the handkerchief around it at the same time. 

He tries again, lip caught between his teeth, and he’s so focused that he almost misses when Loki’s free hand comes up to help him. He notices, though, when Loki gently lifts the bird’s wing into place.

“Now,” Loki murmurs.

Thor slides the handkerchief between the bird’s body and its wing, and then Loki gently places the wing down. They each take an end of the handkerchief, and without even a word between them, they bring them together to tie closed. Their fingers brush when they move together to make a knot, and Thor has to hold back a shiver. He draws his side of the knot tight, and Loki does the same. Their fingers linger for a moment, until Loki snatches his hand away. 

“I hope this helps,” Thor whispers. The handkerchief stands out against the falcon’s dark feathers. “I don’t know how he’ll hunt though.”

“She,” Loki says softly. “The bird is a she.”

“She, then,” Thor nods. He’s about to say more, but he’s distracted by a bright red circle forming on the handkerchief.

“Quick, Loki, she’s bleeding,” he says.

“Oaf,” Loki replies. “She’s not bleeding, you are. Give me your hand.”

Thor looks down again, and finds, to his shock, that Loki is right. The deep cut in his finger he got grabbing the bird is still there, and its bleeding even more freely now.

“Your hand, Thor. Before you cover that poor bird with red.” 

Thor holds out his hand to Loki. Loki lets go of the falcon’s feet, taking Thor’s hand between his own. He stares at Thor, stares at him n evemore intently than he has before. Thor’s hand goes icy cold. It almost burns, the cold is so deep. It feels as though his very bones are freezing, turning to ice inside his hand. 

The ice retreats only slowly, but once it does, Thor feels oddly warm. Even his wet knees are troubled less by the damp than they were before. He draws back his hand from Loki. 

The cut is gone. There is not even a scar to show where it was before. Thor stares. He stares and stares and searches, wondering if perhaps he had imagined the injury. He can’t have, though, because the handkerchief is still dotted with blood. It stays that way even when Loki reaches out and cradles the bird between his hands, one right over the injured wing. 

The falcon screams again, but she does not struggle. Instead, she relaxes onto Thor’s arm, her little body losing the tension it held before. Loki keeps ahold of her for a few moments, then pulls back. The handkerchief falls to the branch’s floor as he lets the bird go. The bird’s wing no longer hangs at her side. Instead, it is a perfect match for the other wing.

“Take off the hood, Thor,” Loki whispers. 

Thor does as Loki asks, his hand moving almost with a mind of its own as he stares at the bird’s wing. The falcon looks about for a moment when the hood is removed. Her yellow eyes search back and forth. They light, finally, on Loki, and the falcon cocks her head to one side. Loki does the same. 

The falcon cries again, this call softer and as sweet as any a falcon call Thor has ever heard. When the sound dies away, she spreads her wings, launching herself upwards off of Thor’s arm. She soars upwards with great beats, disappearing high above them into the network of Yggdrasil’s interlacing fingers.

Thor finally takes his eyes away from where the falcon disappeared. 

“Loki-” he starts, yet again. 

Loki stands up, reaching down and offering a hand to Thor. When Thor takes it with fingers that he would swear do not tremble, Loki draws him upwards. They stand, facing one another. 

“You pass the test,” Loki says. 

“I- what?”

“Would you like to come inside my house, Thor? You have my permission, now.”

Thor nods. He stumbles after Loki as Loki leads him back to the steps and up them slowly. At the doorway he stops, Loki just inside. 

“Come in, Thor. I think you and I have a lot to talk about, do we not?” Loki invites him again. He reaches out and takes Thor’s hand, the hand he healed without even a word. When he tugs lightly at it, Thor follows him inside, inside the witch’s house, inside Loki’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +find me on [tumblr](http://saltandlimes.tumblr.com), [dreamwidth](http://saltandlimes.dreamwidth.org), or [twitter](http://twitter.com/saltandlimes/)! I'm saltandlimes everywhere.
> 
> +There will be a slight update delay because I'm realizing that ch. 3 was WAY TOO LONG, and so I'm having to restructure a bit.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm SO sorry this took such a long time to post. There were... complications.

Loki waves a hand to light the lamps in the little house. They all burst into flame together, little bright flickers glittering in lanterns placed high on the shelves that line the first room of the house. The polished wood floor glimmers, the wood clearer and darker than that of the branch outside. 

“So, Thor, you’ve found me. What are you going to do now?” Loki asks. 

Thor grabs his right wrist behind his back, standing to attention in the middle of the house. 

“Ah, you’re not sure,” Loki answers his own question. “I’m not what you expected, am I?”

“No,” Thor murmurs. Loki is almost more beautiful in here than he was out on the the branch, the lamplight reflecting off his pale skin and glittering in his deep green eyes. He is nothing like the wrinkled crone that Thor imagined each time he drifted to sleep on his journey to Yggdrasil. He is beautiful, and lithe, and everything Thor thinks about in his bed at home. 

“Come, sit,” Loki says. He points out a low, carven bench set against one wall, covered with cushions. 

Thor crosses the floor, his feet too heavy on the floor, his shoulders feeling too wide for a room made for one. He sits on the edge of the bench, his feet planted flat, his hands resting on his thighs. 

“So, Thor, prince of Asgard, you’ve found your witch. What will you do now?”

Thor swallows, looking around. His eyes light on a kettle and he waves at it. 

“I’ll have a cup of tea, if you’re willing. I haven’t had anything hot since I started my climb.”

Loki grins, moving to the kettle and waving a hand to light a flame beneath it. He turns back to Thor, hopping up on a low table next to the fireplace, his hands on it and his shift riding up where he has one leg crossed over the other. 

“Relax, Thor. I don’t know what your father has told you about me, but I assure you, he’s probably done far worse himself.”

“He hasn’t told me anything,” Thor says. He’s not sure how to feel. Loki is still painfully lovely, and his voice is clear and precise, each of his words like a crystal dropping from his lips. And yet, Thor’s father lies in a sickbed, unable to rule and to reign because of Loki. Loki set a curse so terrible that none in the whole land of Asgard have been able to lift it. Thor’s stomach turns at the very thought. 

His head throbs, and he’s reminded that not only did Loki curse his father, he also laid Thor flat on his back with a wave of his hand. Thor wasn’t expecting it, of course, but even had he have been, he’s not sure that he would have found a way to escape it. He raises a hand to feel at the lump that’s been throbbing for the past few hours. He forgot about it in the excitement of finding the witch’s house, and then finding the witch to be Loki himself, but it has come back and made itself known. 

“Are you alright?” Loki asks, jumping back of his table, and walking across the room to meet Thor. 

“My head,” Thor murmurs. “That was some hit you gave me.”

Loki laughs, throwing his head back. His hair ripples in the firelight like a sheet of pure night cloaking his shoulders. 

“I can give you a balm that will take away some of the pain, and pour you a tea that will ease the rest. Will you take it?”

Loki does not wait for Thor to answer. Instead, he disappears through one of the doors off of the room, and Thor hears a rustle from inside. There’s a crash, and Loki mutters something, just quietly enough that Thor can’t quite make it out. 

“Is everything fine?” he calls. 

Loki doesn’t answer. Instead, he appears at the doorway, his cheeks slightly flushed, holding a glass jar and a sachet. He sets the sachet next to a squat brown clay teapot that rests on the table next to the kettle. With a silver spoon he takes out of the sachet, he measure out three spoonfuls of whatever is inside, and then comes back to where Thor is still sitting on the bench. 

“Turn around,” he orders. 

“What are you going to do?” Thor asks, though he just barely stops himself from doing what Loki demands right away. 

“Soothe your head. Would that be alright, prince?” Loki’s voice is sharp, but his fingers are soft where they land on Thor’s jaw, sliding down across his chin. 

Thor turns to one side, then swings his legs over the bench, straddling it. Loki clicks his tongue. 

“That’s perfect,” he tells Thor. He swings one leg over the bench as well, and suddenly he’s right behind Thor, his hands on Thor’s shoulders. 

“You’re broader than Odin was at your age,” Loki says. His voice whispers against Thor’s ear, soft and melodic. 

“You don’t seem old enough to have known my father,” Thor says. He hardly wants to breathe. Loki parts his hair, laying it over each shoulder, and draws a finger down the center of his bare neck. Thor shivers. He doesn’t know if he’s about to get a knife to the throat or a kiss, but something makes him want whichever Loki decides to give. 

“Haven’t you learned not to remark on someone’s age?” Loki murmurs. 

“I did not think that rule applied to men you met in the wood, who promptly gave you a good knock on the head.”

“No, particularly not if you deserved it,” Loki snickers into his ear. 

“And I did, at that,” Thor answers.

“Where did you hit it?” Loki asks, and at first, Thor can’t remember why they’re in this position, but then he reaches up and runs a hand over the back of his head. He winces when his fingers brush the lump, and Loki’s hands still on his neck. 

“Oh, I see,” Loki says. “Tilt your head forward.”

Thor drops his chin to his chest. There’s a pop and then the thick, viscous slurp of whatever is in the jar Loki brought out. Loki sets his hands back on Thor's shoulders, and this time they’re slick with something that warms as soon as it touches Thor’s skin. 

“This is going to get in your hair,” Loki tells him, his voice barely more than a whisper now. “But I’ll let you wash it later.”

Thor hums in agreement. Loki’s hands have swept up his neck, and now they find there way to the sore spot on his scalp. Loki explores it with cautious fingers, tracing the edge and then sliding lightly over the top. Thor sighs as the heat eats into the aching lump. 

“Why are you doing this?” he asks, the words thick and heavy in his mouth. 

“Why not?” Loki asks, and Thor has no answer. 

***

They drink tea that night, and Loki leads Thor to a bed that is light and as soft as any in Asgard’s great halls. Thor sinks into it and falls asleep almost immediately, his hammer at his side and his head on the pillow. 

When he wakes in the morning, it’s to pale green light streaming through a window he doesn’t remember seeing the night before, and the sound of someone singing deeper in the house. He stands up and stretches. The room Loki gave him is just large enough for the bed, and the trunk that rests at its foot. The walls are more dark paneled wood, and the floor is polished just as brightly as that in the room where Loki treated his sore head. Thor reaches up at that thought and feels for the lump he had last night. 

It’s gone. 

It’s as though it never was, as though he imagined in entirely. Yet when he runs his fingers through his hair, the smell of wood and leaves and something sweet rises from it, reminding him that it was no dream nor illusion. Thor shakes his head. 

He doesn’t bother to put back on his leather jerkin or vambraces. He only pulls his tunic back over his head and belts it tight, Mjolnir finding her rightful place at his side. The door swings open silently, and he steps out into a narrow corridor with doors branching off to right and left. Thor shakes his head again. The house looked far smaller than this on the outside, but perhaps the bump to his head had been worse than he imagined. If that was the case, he wouldn’t have expected it to be gone already, but he’s quickly learning that with Loki, no things are certain. 

When he walks down the hall, Loki’s voice grows stronger. Thor can’t quite make out his words. Instead, they echo down the hall in a river of sound, flowing over him and making his heart beat a little harder in his chest. Thor peaks into an open doorway. Inside, herbs hang from the ceiling and bags of something sit on the floor. There’s a heavy table in the center, a few knives in a block on one side. Thor turn back to the corridor and starts.

Loki is at the end of the hall, still singing, carrying a basket. Linen pokes out, and it looks as fine as the shift Loki wore yesterday. He’s wearing another today, this time wrapped with a belt that seems made of vines. When he glances up and sees Thor, he pauses. 

“Did you sleep well?” he asks. 

Thor nods, coming down the hallway to him and taking the basket out of his arms. 

“Where does this go?” 

“I have to hang things to dry outside.” Loki says. “Would you like to come? Perhaps your friend will have returned.”

“Friend?” Thor asks. 

“The bird. You did seem to get along wonderfully.”

Thor laughs. He turns and leads Loki down the corridor, carrying the basket of laundry. The front room is dark, the only light from the windows on one wall. When they step outside, however, Thor has to blink. It is day, and this little clearing in Yggdrasil’s branches is drenched in green-gold. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Loki says from behind him. 

“Everything here is beautiful,” Thor says, and feels, rather than sees Loki smile in response.

***

Loki insists that Thor rest. Thor protests that his head feels entirely better, but it doesn’t take much for Loki to convince him that a few days here won’t hurt. He still hasn’t asked Loki for the cure, not directly, and he tells himself that if he spends some time with Loki, it will be easier to ask. 

He sleeps in a little each morning, waking up slowly as the room fills with light. He stops belting on Mjolnir after the first day. Loki does not seem in a hurry to harm him, and Thor lets her rest in his room, next to the bed. 

It has quickly become _his_ room. He has taken his clothes out from his bag, letting them air, and then, when Loki offers, washing them clean in the barrel of rainwater Loki keeps out back. After two days, Loki insists that Thor join him for a bath. He pokes Thor in the side and then takes a long sniff at his hair, wrinkling his nose. 

“That bad?” Thor asks. 

“Probably worse,” Loki says. He tosses his own sweet smelling hair over one shoulder. “You’ll finally get your chance at that bath,” he tells Thor. “Now go off and find whatever you use to tame that nest you call hair.”

“I’ll have you know,” Thor says over his shoulder as he goes to his room, “that my hair is well known for its beauty. It has been remarked upon by many a maiden.”

“I’m sure the maidens haven’t had to see it when you’ve been caring for it yourself.” 

Loki is just barely audible down the corridor as Thor digs though his pack. He pulls out the rough soap he carries in the field, and then hefts Mjolnir, belting her on. When he sits down on the bed to pull on his boots, it groans under their their combined weight. 

When Thor comes out of his room Loki is standing at the front door, dressed in one of his thin shifts with soft shoes on his feet. He looks Thor over, raising an eyebrow.

“What’s that for?” he asks. Thor opens his mouth, but Loki keeps going before he can answer. “No harm will come to you. Not while you walk in Yggdrasil’s branches with me.”

Thor pauses in the middle of the front room. Loki carries no weapon, nor has Thor seen one about the house - though there are rooms hiding in every corner as yet unexplored. It is not as though Loki needs one, however. Thor’s head my not hurt anymore, but he’s unlikely to forget waking up flat on his back with Loki over him anytime soon. 

Thor fumbles at his waist, and Mjolnir drops to his side in the middle of the room. 

“Leave it-”

“Her,” Thor interrupts. 

“Leave _her_ there,” Loki says, giggling. “She can wait for you while you go get clean.”

Thor nods. Without his belt on, his tunic hangs loose about him, billowing at his waist and and over his hips. He is only a man in a wooden cabin; he seems nothing of the prince that he knows he should be.

Loki stretches out a hand towards Thor. When Thor takes it, Lokis fingers are soft inside his larger hand, so delicate that Thor wonders, fleetingly, if only a little pressure might crush them. One of Loki’s fingers strokes along the inside of Thor’s wrist, the nail snagging just where the tendon edges into his palm. Thor shivers.

Loki leads him outside. Yggdrasil’s little branches glimmer with dew, and the path leading through them is dark with wet leaves. They make their way though the thicket, winding around knobs that mark old growth and broken fingers that lie, decaying, on stronger, truer wood. Before long, they come to Yggdrasil’s trunk. After a few days in Loki’s cabin, Thor has almost forgotten how immense the trunk is. It stretches off to either side like a wall, blocking out any world that might exist on its other side. 

He blushes when Loki drops his hand and glances back at him. Loki has led them to the edge of the branch. They wait there for just a single heartbeat and then Loki leaps, falling through the air to the branch below them.

***

The bath is no less beautiful when he walks towards it tall and proud, when he is not desperate for a drink of water and spurred on by unslaked thirst. Loki leads him around it to where steps climb up to the lip of the basin. There, next to them, is a little table. On it sits a heavy box. The lid creaks open when Loki pushes it up. Inside there’s a long handled brush and a silver ewer, its bright sheen glimmering in the dark cavern of the box. Loki takes them out, setting them on the table next to the box. He turns to Thor. 

“What are you waiting for?” he asks. “Go on, get undressed.”

Thor blushes, taking a step back from Loki and drawing his shoulder in. 

“Are you embarrassed?” Loki says. He pulls his thin shift over his head and steps out of his shoes, standing naked and barefooted on Yggdrasil’s wood. “Don’t be. Come bathe.”

Thor lowers his eyes, though not enough that he cannot see Loki climbing the steps to the bath. He sets a hand on the rim when he reaches it, and the golden light flashes out in cobweb lines across the basin. Steam curls upwards as Loki steps over the edge, wreathing him and hiding a little of his body from view. Thor lets out a soft sigh. 

His own tunic is heavy as he pulls it over his head. He hangs it on the peg next to Loki’s shift, then unlaces his breeches with fingers that shake only a little. They hang about his hips as he bends down to free his feet from his boots, and then slip down his legs to pool on the woody floor. He folds them, straightening the creases perfectly, and sets them next to the box. 

“Bring the ewer and the brush,” Loki calls down to him. 

Thor takes one in either hand. The climb up the stairs to the bath seems longer than it should be. Thor keeps his head down, watching his own pale feet as he climbs. He pauses at the edge of the bath. The water inside is crystal clear, and he can see straight down to the bottom, see each step carved into it that lead inward. There is not a leaf or stick to mar the water’s perfection, nor does he see his own reflection staring up at him. 

“Aren’t you getting in? The water will do no good if you don’t.”

There’s a ripple, and then Loki is standing in front of him. Thor can see only his pale legs, perfectly formed and shapely. He swallows hard. Before he can say anything, Loki reaches out and sets his hand underneath Thor’s chin. He raises Thor’s head until Thor is looking him in the eye, then takes the ewer and the brush from Thor’s hands. 

Loki steps back a pace, and Thor sets one foot in the water. It is pleasantly warm, lapping about him and welcoming him inside. The carven steps are just the right size to hold his feet, and he follows them down, Loki backing away as Thor enters the pool. 

“There,” Loki breathes.

He has let his long hair down, and it wraps and curls about his waist just as it did the first time Thor saw him. Thor traces the path of a single strand with his eye, following it down across Loki’s chest, where it crosses a pink nipple, and finally finding its end just below his ribs. Thor’s eyes continue down just a little before he remembers himself.

He pulls his eyes away when he catches sight of those dark curls that so captivated him the last time he saw Loki in the bath. Loki says nothing. Instead he bends over and sets the ewer down on a rock that lurks just beneath the surface of the pool. The water laps at its base and the silver of its sides is flecked with shimmering reflections. 

Loki dips the brush into the water, and brings it up to scrub his own body. Thor shakes himself, bending his knees until he is submerged up to his chest. After days sleeping rough and climbing the tree, he can almost feel the filth of the road flowing off of him, yet the water remains crystal clear. There is no sound save the raps of the brush on Loki’s skin and the splash when he rubs his hands over his sides. He lets his eyes slip had shut.

They fly open when a hand lands on his shoulder. Loki is right next to him, still standing in the water, and Thor is face to face with his flat belly. He is frozen in place, and only Loki’s sharp squeeze at his shoulder frees him. 

“Let me scrub your back,” Loki says, holding up the brush. The handle is long enough that Thor could do it himself, but he finds himself turning and murmuring his assent.

The brush is softer than it looks, and Loki is careful with it, dragging it across Thor’s back in slow circles. He runs it over and over the thick muscles of Thor’s shoulder’s, bringing it down the center of his spine. Thor breathes in sharply when Loki’s fingers brush his skin, but Loki says nothing, only continues to stroke Thor’s skin with the bristles. He drags the brush lower and lower, until it scrapes across the curve of Thor’s ass. Thor jumps, starting away from Loki and whirling around. 

Loki looks at him, his gaze level. Thor flushes, his whole body glowing with it. Loki does not seem to think anything is amiss. It is only Thor who has pulled away, only Thor who stares over Loki’s shoulder in an attempt not to look at Loki’s beautiful naked body once again. Loki grins at his flush, not bothering to look away. 

“Wash my hair now?” he asks, his voice soft.

Loki turns away, as though Thor had not frozen in place in the warm pool, as though Thor’s fingers were not fixed in balls at his sides and his breath caught in his chest. He lifts the ewer from the pool, pouring water over his own head. It streams down his shoulder blades, coursing down the long line of his spine and running over his beautiful ass to fall back to the pool’s glassy surface. 

“Do you have something to wash it with?” Thor asks softly, taking one step closer. 

Loki reaches up, running his hands over his hair. 

“There,” he says. 

“What?”

“Just scrub,” Loki tells him. 

Thor reaches out, his hand still clenched in a fist. He uncurls his fingers one by one, his fingertips finally reaching Loki’s hair. It’s soft as silk. Before he knows what he’s going to do, both of his hands are buried in it. Suds form, bubbles starting to fly off. Loki hums softly, tipping his head back as Thor starts to massage his scalp. 

“Just like that,” he murmurs. 

His hair is terribly long, and Thor runs a hand all the way down to the ends. His fingertips brush the small of Loki’s back, and Loki hums softly again. For a moment, Thor is tempted to keep going, stroking over Loki’s ass and tracing the top of his thigh. He stops, though, and reaches up to stroke Loki’s hair once again.

“Are you getting it clean?” Loki asks. 

Thor pulls his hand away. 

“Sorry-” he stammers. “Sorry. I meant-”

“Shh,” Loki soothes him. “Why are you so worried, Thor?”

“I don’t know,” Thor whispers. 

“Finish washing my hair, then,” Loki says, “and then I’ll wash yours.”

Thor runs a hand over Loki’s shoulder and nods. He reaches down to dip the ewer in the water. It has remained hot throughout their bath. When he pours water over Loki’s head, rinsing away the suds, they disappear the moment they reach the pool, the surface remaining as clear as it was a the beginning of their bath. Loki turns to him and takes it out of Thor’s hands. 

“Now it’s your turn,” he says. He places a hand on Thor’s waist and swings him around.

Thor holds his breath as warm water cascades over his head and down his back. He lets it out in a rush when his hair hands sopping over his shoulders. It catches in his throat again at the first press of Loki’s fingers. This is infinitely worse than the brush. His whole body is alight with feeling. Loki works his scalp with long circles of his hands, massaging Thor’s hair clean of the dirt and grime of too many days on the road. Every single strand of it is caressed, cared for, until Thor is trembling. 

“Cold?” Loki asks, his voice whispering through the steam around them. 

“No,” Thor answers, keeping his voice steady with a monumental effort. 

He should not feel this way. He is here because of a curse that Loki himself set on his father. There is no space for this between them, no space for the soft scrape of Loki’s nails across Thor’s scalp. When Thor was sleeping rough on the road, his head pillowed on his pack and a blanket drawn over his shoulders to ward of the night’s cold, he had imagined how he would take hold of the witch and demand the cure, his fingers tight on their shoulders. He had imagined a wizened monster, a creature who had rotted from the evil that must have occupied their soul. 

Loki is not what he was expected. Loki is young and beautiful, soft spoken and caring. He has opened his house to Thor without a care, has fed him and tended his wounds. He has hardly spoken against Thor’s father, despite what must have once been a very great hurt between them. He is confident in the face of Thor’s strength, unimpressed by Thor’s status. It’s a heady combination, powerful enough that Thor thinks he could get drunk on it. Loki can get nothing from him, wants for nothing, needs not curry favor with him. 

Water sluices over Thor’s head and he starts. He has gotten so lost in his own thoughts, in the calming trace of Loki’s fingers, that he hardly noticed Loki pulling away. Now, though, he shakes his head, sending water splattering in all directions. 

“There are towels,” Loki tells him. He huffs as Thor turns to him, grinning. It is impossible not to grin at Loki, not when he sounds so terribly indignant. 

“This is more fun,” Thor says. He should not feel this joy either, as though he and Loki have been friends their whole lives. He does, though. He does, and he cannot stop himself. 

“I know what else is fun,” Loki says, as though ignorant of Thor’s thoughts, as though Thor’s eyes do not always betray his innermost feelings. 

“What?”

“Come with me,” Loki says. He leads Thor from the pool. Steam rises from his pale skin as he steps free from the water and stands, naked, on the top step. He beckons to Thor when Thor pauses. “Don’t worry. It won’t bite.”

He pauses next to the table and puts the brush and the ewer back in their places, then beckons again. Thor follows, reaching out for his towel when he gets to the bottom of the steps. 

“just carry that,” Loki says. He looks as comfortable naked as he did in his thin shift. Thor blushes. Loki’s lack of shame is humbling. Even in Asgard’s baths, where all are bare, Thor has always been unsure of himself. He is the son of the king, and yes, he is a warrior beyond compare, but does that not mean that he should appear beyond compare, untouchable and desirable to all? It is a question that sits in the back of his mind and often speaks more loudly than he would wish it to. 

Loki turns away. He starts down a small stone path that Thor did not notice before, one that leads deep into a thicket of Yggdrasil’s branches. Here, the leaves have grown broad and thick, their green deeper than that of the surrounding branches. The branches rise in phalanxes of straight beams, lining the path on either side. It winds its way deep enough that, looking back over his shoulder, Thor loses sight of the pool. Just when he’s about to ask Loki what they’re doing, they round a final curve. 

In front of them is a small wooden hut with a heavy door. Its chimney puffs grey smoke, which rises to curl into the green dimness above them. A sharp wind blows as Loki goes to the door, and Thor shivers.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be warm inside,” Loki says. He steps into the hut, and Thor takes a deep breath. If this is some sort of dark witchery, he will bear it, but he thinks it will not be. All that Loki has shown him so far has been true hospitality. 

The first room of the hut is narrow, and has only a little wooden bench and some pegs on the wall. The narrow window on one side fills it with soft green light. Loki stands at an inner door, smiling at Thor. 

“I like my small luxuries,” he says. He opens the inner door and heat rushes out. “Come quickly.”

Thor follows Loki inside, and Loki shuts the door behind him. The only light is from a single lamp that hangs in one corner. It has no flame, nor any wick, and Thor swallows hard and looks away from it. The room is lined with wood, two rows of benches on each side, one higher and one lower. On the opposite wall, a squat stove lurks. Its black doors are shut, but on it sits a pile of heavy rocks. They are so hot they almost glow, and inside the little room, every moment sends hot air rushing across Thor’s skin. 

“A sauna,” he breathes. He has seen a few out in the countryside, but they are not so common in the city proper. He has heard tales of them, of dark spirits that lurk in the corners of the heated rooms, of emerging from one clean and pure. 

“One of those luxuries. One wants them when one is all alone, ” Loki says. “Sit down, Thor.”

Thor sinks onto one of the benches at the side of the room, spreading his towel underneath himself. Sweat has already started on his forehead and the small of his back. It beads up, but does not roll down his body, not yet. Loki glances over at the bench opposite Thor, then sits down next to him. 

“There is no one else in Yggdrasil’s branches?” Thor asks. It seems a lonely life, here in the tree with only the birds to keep one company. 

“The world-tree is vast beyond any imagination,” Loki answers, his eyes sparkling in the sauna’s half-dark. “I do not doubt that there are others here. Whether they are others I would care to meet, I do not know.”

“Is it so dangerous?” Thor asks.

“I laid you flat on your back with a simple spell. I am by no means the most powerful being in all the worlds that Yggdrasil holds.”

“Why are you here, then, if it is both lonely and so perilous?”

“I did not say perilous,” Loki said, “Not for me. Only a place where caution is needed.” 

He crosses his arms in front of his chest. It is even paler here, with sweat starting to gleam on it. Thor tips his head to one side. 

“That did not answer my question, Loki.”

“Perhaps I do not wish to answer you,” Loki stands. He makes his way to the door and opens it. 

“I did not mean to offend,” Thor says. “Do not leave.”

Loki chuckles. He reaches out to the next room and grabs a wooden bucket that Thor hardly noticed earlier. 

“I am not so easily insulted as all that,” Loki says. He crosses the room and tips the bucket over the rocks on the stove. Steam hisses into the air, filling the room around them. Thor gasps, the wet air even warmer than the earlier dry heat. 

“Then tell me,” Thor says. 

“Would I be well served on the ground, when I have been set as your father’s enemy?” Loki asks. He stands in the middle of the room, steam wreathing him and sweat dripping down his body. “I do not want to live my life in fear, nor do I wish to spend my days hiding who and what I am. You ground dwellers do not take kindly to people like me. Here I am safe and if there is no one around, then there is no one to speak to me as I have been spoken to in the past.”

“Oh Loki,” Thor starts up off the bench, cupping one hand around the back of Loki’s neck to force Loki to look at him. 

“I do not want your pity, prince,” Loki snaps. “I am happy here.”

“I would never pity you,” Thor says. 

His lips find Loki’s mouth without his command. He draws Loki closer to him, pressing his burning skin tight to Loki’s. At first Loki is stiff against him, his arms crossed and his lips unmoving. Then, suddenly, as though a wall breaks, he wraps his arms around Thor’s waist. Thor cannot think. Everything is heat around him, and Loki against him. Loki, this beautiful being trapped in a cage of woven branches that he swears are not bars. Loki, who wants no pity, whose lips fit against Thor’s as though every kiss Thor has ever given was practice for this one. 

Thor is becoming lightheaded, the heat around them too much, the heat of Loki’s mouth more overwhelming than the sauna itself. If he were drunk on Loki’s touch before, he is now past the point of intoxication, reckless and needy, base and holy, and all things are both impossible and possible now. He pulls away just enough to press his soaking forehead to Loki’s. 

“Loki,” he whispers again, and this time Loki does not retort, or even answer aloud. His response is as quiet as hands on skin and shared breathes in the dark, and it speaks volumes louder than any speech.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +Complications included being in a different country and also realizing that this fic needed some serious reworking because chapter 3 was WAY WAY WAY too long _and_ needed things added.
> 
> +[EDIT] Ok so I lied. On revision, this fic has far more potential than I first anticipated. Because of that, I'm reworking and rewriting a lot of the last few chapters to bring them up to the quality that the rest of this deserves. It will take a bit. Please, please, please bare with me. 
> 
> +Find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/saltandlimes) and [tumblr](http://saltandlimes.tumblr.com/)


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